The Pythia at Delphi

At Delphi in Greece the inspired oracle of Apollo, the Pythia, underwent a form of possession in which she was viewed as a vehicle for the god. Nevertheless, uncertainty has surrounded the exact nature of the experience of possession of the Pythia, and what could cause or motivate such experiences. This chapter explores the use of a range of explicit analogies and explanatory models to interpret the experience of the Pythia at the sanctuary of Apollo, and the broader context within which it occurred. Understanding of the Pythia can draw on explanatory models that reach beyond the categories of divination and possession. This includes not only the wider class of revelatory experiences in which supernatural agents (such as God or gods, demons, or spirits) speak or act through humans, but other types of experience involving alterations of the sense of identity and agency, whether they occur in psychopathology or as normal variations in experience. Examples include hallucinations and alien control phenomena in schizophrenia, and their analogues in religious experience; dissociation; and experiments combining suggestion and neuroimaging to model revelatory and possession states. All provide potential insights into the forms of experience, attributed significance, and causal processes involved in Apollo’s communication through the Pythia. They also point to the central role of ideas, expectations, and beliefs in influencing dissociations of the sense of self, and make the Pythia’s possession by Apollo seem less exotic, improbable, or deviant than it might once have seemed.

Euxenippos at Oropos

The chapter explores how divination through dream incubation was involved in the decision-making processes of the Athenian democracy. It focuses on the consultation of Amphiaraos in the mid-fourth century by a delegation including Euxenippos, which we know about from a speech of Isaios. It explores the wider evidence about the practical aspects of dream incubation, and draws on modern studies of dreaming, looking at the practice of recording dreams in writing at the moment of waking, and self-training to improve dreaming and dream recall. The chapter argues that, as in other forms of divination, Athens employed men like Euxenippos as ‘expert dreamers’, who were expected to have dreams when required, and who were supported by other Athenians, who acted as assistants and witnesses of the process. It further argues that divination by dreaming was taken seriously by the democracy, with expert dreamers having potentially great influence on decision-making, and becoming themselves inevitably part of the political process.

Which Gods if Any

This chapter explores two important factors that led to differences in how Greek and Chinese interlocutors addressed mantic queries to divine powers, and argues that the relative absence of ‘gods’ in Chinese mantic practice (divination) had significant consequences for both cosmology and mantic practice itself. The first of these factors was different beliefs about the degree of direct divine involvement. Greek mantic practices consistently address gods directly, whereas some Chinese mantic methods are significantly grounded in cosmological contexts and calculations. The second was the Chinese belief in a systematic cosmos, which had no immediate Greek parallel. The chapter examines how Chinese ‘spirits’ (shen神‎) were addressed in mantic practice, despite this ‘cosmological turn’. It revisits two problems within the literature on this topic. One (the so-called ‘“question” question’), a controversy in the study of Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions, is whether we should understand ‘mantic questions’ as queries or requests. The other, a controversy in the study of Greek divination, is how Greek oracular responses were used by consultor states, especially the argument that the most important functions of oracles were political and rhetorical.

Testing the Oracle?

By exploring stories about oracular consultation in light of actual practice, and vice versa, this chapter aims both to nuance current characterization of specific oracle stories and their meanings for their ancient audiences, and to deepen understanding of the lived experience of oracular consultation. Starting from the story of oracular consultation by King Kroisos (as told by Herodotos), this chapter explores literary and epigraphic evidence for dual oracular consultations of three different kinds. While drawing attention to the socio-political implications of consulting an oracle, this evidence also underlines the ancient perception of the pervasive presence of uncertainty in these interactions. In this light, Kroisos’ activities—often interpreted as illustrating how not to treat an oracle—can be seen to be similar to more familiar, everyday types of multiple oracular consultations.

Augur Anxieties in the Ancient Near East

This contribution examines divination in ancient Mesopotamia from the practitioners’ own social, economic, and cosmological perspectives. It maintains that such an approach reveals divination to be an enterprise heavily informed by a number of insecurities, and that attention to these sources of anxiety sheds light on Mesopotamian religious worldviews. The chapter is divided into four parts. The first offers a brief synopsis of Near Eastern divination. The second examines two competing sources of anxiety that diviners negotiated: skepticism from others and their own theological principles. The third investigates the ways that diviners addressed these insecurities. The final portion of the chapter proposes several conclusions based on the combined evidence that concern the legitimation of divination as a means of seeking divine will, the rise of astrology and its impact on other forms of divination, the diviners’ ways of controlling cosmological anxieties, and the depiction of divination in Mesopotamian “literary” texts as a reflection of divinatory ideologies and the codependency of diviners and the royal house.

Whose Dream Is It Anyway?

Dreams were a deeply paradoxical method of divination in the ancient world; sometimes dismissed or treated with the greatest of suspicion, they might also be treated as a routine and reliable way of obtaining insight into divine will—occasionally by the very same person. This chapter argues that dreams had a distinctive role within the many options of ancient divination, and that they were compelling in specific sets of circumstances. The more divination was routinized, the more likely there was to be an occasion when a dream was the best way of legitimately circumventing divinatory habits. Equally critical are those factors affecting the reception of a dreamer’s claims; social standing, political circumstances, and personal idiosyncrasies all played a part in ‘managing the significance of signs’. Accounting for dreams was a critical test of any system of thought (including medicine). Despite the contradictory variety of general statements about the reliability of dreams, there is an underlying but accessible logic to whether it was right to take them as divine instructions, or a meaningless act of the imagination.

A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Use of Lots

This chapter interrogates the visual, material, and literary evidence used to support the argument that the Pythia used lots (stones, pebbles, beans, or other) at Delphi. In particular, it considers recent ethnographic descriptions of divinatory practices to challenge two scholarly assumptions that drive interpretation of this material. The first is that aleatory forms of divination at Delphi affirmed or denied a client’s question, and thus constrained or limited oracular responses. The second assumption is that ancient written records of Delphic divination are adequate guides to divinatory exchanges at Delphi. Recent ethnographic studies demonstrate that divinatory sessions, including those that incorporate the use of aleatory devices, are lengthy and even combative, and that most written descriptions of such sessions in earlier ethnographic literature omit details and are best understood as brief summaries. This review of the ancient evidence for the use of lots at Delphi, alongside such recent ethnographic studies, suggest the need for a renewed scrutiny of the relationship between ancient written accounts and divinatory sessions at Delphi and the notion that the goal of divinatory dialogues is to obtain as quickly as possible a simple, brief answer (such as an aleatory device is imagined to provide) to the complex and troubling problems that motivate divination.

Prodigies in the Early Principate?

This chapter stems from the question of whether we can still meaningfully speak of prodigies for the early Roman Principate. Modern accounts of prodigy expiation in Roman religion end their treatments with the fall of the Republic and do not provide any discussion of prodigies under the Principate. A fundamental shift is usually identified in the transition from prodigies that affect and pertain to the res publica as a whole to portents that affect the person of the emperor, and portend either the beginning of a reign or its imminent, traumatic end. On this account, the system of public prodigies can only function in a context where the Senate is central as the main body of religious authority and can play a leading role in the process of interpretation and expiation. When that system morphs into a monarchic regime, prodigies are replaced by private portents and omina, which focus on the emperor, and reflect either his own preoccupations or wider concerns about his power. This chapter offers some correctives to that account by offering a fresh reconsideration of the infrastructure of prodigy reporting and expiation in the early Principate, and argues for a scenario in which the involvement of the Senate and the direct input of the priestly colleges retain a significant role.

Unsuccessful Sacrifice in Roman State Divination

This chapter explores what Romans thought they were doing through sacrifice, and what this can tell us about Roman conceptions of the relationship between gods and human beings. The chapter focuses on those animal sacrifices that Romans believed had been unsuccessful in that they had failed to please the gods. The chapter queries the current consensus that Roman divinatory sacrifices generally proceeded until a favourable sign was obtained (usque ad litationem). It is argued that Roman magistrates took signs from failed sacrifices more seriously than we have often thought, and that this behaviour can be read as evidence that they were anxious about their relationship with their gods.

Divination and the ‘Real Presence’ of the Divine in Ancient Greece

This chapter applies Robert Orsi’s concepts of ‘real presence’ and ‘abundant history’ to the study of ancient Greek religion, using divination as a case study. It proposes that we should take real presence seriously as something that most Greeks took for granted. Although investigating religious experience is extraordinarily difficult, one of the best places to look is in the ubiquitous practice of divination. For it is in the context of the divinatory ritual that the real presence of the divine was commonly to be experienced. Case studies include the epiphany of Asklepios to Isyllos of Epidauros, the lead oracular tablets from Dodona, and the role of divination in the Athenian expedition to Sicily in 415 BCE. The latter event is compared to the belief of the Lakota Sioux that their ghost shirts would protect them from bullets at the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. In both cases, a collective belief in prophecy and in the real presence of supernatural forces instilled an assurance of victory, and this assurance was then followed by a rejection of the religious specialists who had promoted a positive interpretation of the message and the outcome.